Re: Fixed navbar or not?

Posted 22 January 2013 - 05:57 AM

Depends on how you create it. If done correctly, a horizontal bar at the top of the page isn't that annoying. Though you have to make sure the content will never get "stuck" underneath it; that any content is padded far enough down that even when scrolled all the way at the top, it won't overlap the nav bar. You also need to make sure you remove it on mobile devices. Those screens are small enough already without that eating up screen real estate.

A sidebar is also not too bad, as long as you avoid any sort of elastic or springy animation effects. Those are kind of cool for about 5 seconds. Then they become annoying. Just fix it with CSS and leave it at that.

Re: Fixed navbar or not?

Posted 22 January 2013 - 01:08 PM

Atli, on 22 January 2013 - 05:57 AM, said:

Depends on how you create it. If done correctly, a horizontal bar at the top of the page isn't that annoying. Though you have to make sure the content will never get "stuck" underneath it; that any content is padded far enough down that even when scrolled all the way at the top, it won't overlap the nav bar. You also need to make sure you remove it on mobile devices. Those screens are small enough already without that eating up screen real estate.

A sidebar is also not too bad, as long as you avoid any sort of elastic or springy animation effects. Those are kind of cool for about 5 seconds. Then they become annoying. Just fix it with CSS and leave it at that.

I agree that it's really ugly when I minimize the window to a mobile sized screen. I'm trying to figure out some way to make it better, trying to get into all that "mobile-first" design. It's just hard to break the habit of designing for desktop first

What would you guys think of this navigation?(Perhaps not finished, might want to add a little to it)
At the top:

Scrolled down a little:

Still not sure if I want it to be fixed

Also the mobile version would be just horrible if I wasn't going to fix anything :